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The program will not allow students to earn an M.I.T. degree. Instead, those who are able to exhibit a mastery of the subjects taught on the platform will receive an official certificate of completion. The certificate will obviously not carry the weight of a traditional M.I.T. diploma, but it will provide an incentive to finish the online material. According to the New York Times, in order to prevent confusion, the certificate will be a credential bearing the distinct name of a new not-for-profit body that will be created within M.I.T.

The new online platform will look to build upon the decade-long success of the university’s original free online platform, OpenCourseWare (OCW), which has been used by over 100 million students and contains course material for roughly 2,100 classes. The new M.I.T.x online program will not compete with OCW in the number of courses that it offers. However, the program will offer students a greater interactive experience.

Students using the program will be able to communicate with their peers through student-to-student discussions, allowing them an opportunity to ask questions or simply brainstorm with others, while also being able to access online laboratories and self-assessments. In the future, students and faculty will be able to control which classes will be available on the system based on their interests, creating a personalized education setting.

M.I.T.x represents the next logical evolution in the mushrooming business of free online education by giving students an interactive experience as opposed to a simple videotaped lecture. Academic Earth (picked by Time Magazine as one of the 50 best websites of 2009) has cornered the market on free online education by making a smorgasbord of online course content – from prestigious universities such as Stanford and Princeton – accessible and free to anyone in the world. Users on Academic Earth can watch lectures from some of the brightest minds our universities have to offer from the comfort of their own computer screen. However, that is all they can do: watch. Khan Academy, another notable online education site, offers a largely free interactive experience to its users through assessments and exercises, but it limits itself to K-12 education. By contrast, M.I.T.x will combine the interactivity of the Khan Academy with the collegiate focus of Academic Earth, while drawing primarily from M.I.T.’s advanced course material.

“M.I.T. has long believed that anyone in the world with the motivation and ability to engage M.I.T. coursework should have the opportunity to attain the best M.I.T.-based educational experience that Internet technology enables,” said M.I.T. President Susan Hockfield in the university’s press release.

According to the university, residential M.I.T. students can expect to use M.I.T.x in a different way than online-only students. For instance, the program will be used to augment on-campus course work by expanding upon what students learn in class (faculty and students will determine how to incorporate the program into their courses). The university intends to run the two programs simultaneously with no reduction in OCW offerings.

According to the New York Times, access to the software will be free. However, there will most likely be an “affordable” charge, not yet determined, for a credential. The program will also save individuals from the rigors of the cutthroat M.I.T. admissions process, as online-only students will not have to be enrolled in the prestigious, yet expensive, university to access its online teaching resources.

Those champing at the bit to dive into M.I.T.x will have to wait, as the university doesn’t plan to launch a prototype of the platform until the spring of 2012. According to M.I.T. Provost L. Rafael Reif and Anant Agarwal, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, the prototype might include only one course, but it would quickly expand to include many more courses.

Once launched, M.I.T. officials expect the M.I.T.x platform to be a giant hit amongst other universities looking to create or expand upon their online course materials. “Creating an open learning infrastructure will enable other communities of developers to contribute to it, thereby making it self-sustaining,” said Agarwal in the M.I.T. press release.

Whether M.I.T.x will directly threaten the margins at for-profit online universities, such as the University of Phoenix, APUS, or DeVry remains to be seen. But as M.I.T.x starts to provide many of the salient virtues of for-profit online colleges, such as a robust learning management systems and real-time virtual interaction, these publicly traded education companies might have to lower fees in order to compete with M.I.T.x’s compelling free price. In addition, the success of M.I.T.x, OCW, and Academic Earth may push dramatic technological innovation at for-profits, so that they can maintain a unique selling proposition versus their free competitors. Moreover, as the rapidly growing number of what are termed “self educators” choose free college education, a cottage industry of social media support services might evolve to bring them together for free in-person study and help sessions.

Let me know what you think in the Comments area below. Moreover, feel free to track me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, and follow me on Forbes to receive regular dispatches from the front lines of global education. I am also launching email newsletters on Education, Politics, Culture, and Travel. In addition to summaries and article links, Crotty Newsletter subscribers will receive breaking and market-making news before anyone else. My “Crotty on Education” newsletter, in particular, will include links to videos and podcasts by experts in the field, high-level research reports, plus the invaluable Crotty on Education Stock Index. You can subscribe to Crotty Newsletters here: www.jamescrotty.com/newsletter.html

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I’ve got to say: I went to MIT. I can’t imagine getting what I got from that experience from online course ware. A few of the smartest people I knew there were frequent lecture-skippers; all the value is obviously not in the parts of the experience that can be packaged online. I may go see if I can retake 3.091 and 5.11, though…

I totally agree. And I would say the same for my alma mater of Northwestern University. At the same time, if you want to learn a specific subject, or refresh your knowledge, how can this not be a great thing? I see a grassroots hybrid model evolving, using social media. Where folks take classes together at the growing number of free online universities and then meet in-person to help each other out with topics they don’t grasp. The sky’s the limit here.

I have always been weary of taking classes online but I am thinking about a career change (unfortunately the economy was the main catalyst) and it would be great for me to take a class and see if this is something I want to pursue. Maybe it can help me get an entry level job so I can have the money to take classes and get an actual degree. Thank you M.I.T. from a UW badger!

This is yet another reason why this M.I.T. initiative is so inspiring. As KlHayes says, you can sample a course to determine if the field is right for you. Secondly, it’s a great way to plug holes in one’s training, especially if one does not require a full-fledged degree or certification in the area of study.

Matthew, I’m confused by your comment. You say, “a few of the smartest people I know were frequent lecture skippers”, and yet you *can’t* imagine getting the same experience from an online course? Isn’t that what those few smart students were effectively getting by skipping the lectures? Or did you mean “*Only* a few smart people I know skipped lectures”?

I earned my undergrad degree on-campus at Northwestern and my graduate degree online at Boston University, and I can say from experience the learning environment online was just as robust and personal as what I experienced on-campus. The standards for my online degree were quite high, the testing and exams both rigorous and proctored, and the learning experience was extremely interactive, both with the system and with the professors, facilitators and students. I actually had far more instructor contact in my online degree program than I did in my on-campus one. A well-structured online learning environment can easily rival the learning potential of one that takes place in person.

I think Matthew’s point was he can’t imagine getting the same experience that he got out of MIT just through online learning. Others skipped the onsite portion (ie. lectures), but were still successful…so it isn’t 100% just about what you get out of the lectures onsite.

As a corporate recruiter, I find the potential benefits of this amazing! Far too often I run across folks that haven’t had a fulltime job in a couple years. I typically ask what they have been doing in that time. The answers vary, but most of them revolve around nothing. This is a constructive way to learn something new or hone your skills in getting a new job/career. This is much more positive than having a “woe is me” mentality.

Presumably these apparently smart people already had knowledge of the information taught in the lectures, otherwise I don’t imagine they’d do too well on the course tests and assignments.

And where might these individuals have acquired this knowledge from? Likely through some books, discussions with people who have knowledge about the topic, or perhaps even online (note that the information from the first two aforementioned sources could be nicely packaged online, which would be quite nice for those who don’t have the money for the necessary books, nor any friends or acquaintances who are knowledgeable about and willing to teach the material).

Of course the experience won’t be the same. I don’t think that’s the point. It seems to me that the point is to share knowledge, for free, and to allow people to learn via reputable professors.